Beauty Need Only Be A Whisper
by petrelli heiress
Summary: I cried for you, and the sky cried for you. And when you went I became a hopeless drifter. But this life was not for you, though I learned from you, that beauty need only be a whisper. Peter/Sylar.


**Beauty Need Only Be A Whisper**

**Characters/Pairings: Peter/Sylar (Gabriel), Claire, Angela, Alice, OCs**

**Warning: Character death**

**Author's Note: Where have you gone, Oh Goddess of Crack? Why have you abandoned me to Ye Olde God of Angst? Partly it's because of certain Katie Melua songs, some of them are so sad, you have no idea. I have no idea why he died, or even how. I think that's kinda the point. The title is taken from the song "I Cried For You" by Katie Melua, which kind of inspired this fic.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes or the characters. I don't own the quotes. **

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"_First of all must go your scent upon my pillow, and then I'll say goodbye to your whispers in my dreams. And then our lips will part, in my mind and in my heart, because your kiss went deeper than my skin" – Piece by Piece, _Katie Melua

He died on a Saturday morning. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and clear of clouds, and the grass was wet with dew left over from last night's frost. He slipped out of the world, as unassuming as he had been coming into it. His body was cold, a mere empty husk. There was something terrifying about it.

Time passed quickly, a blur of faces and words.

Claire was the first to arrive, after the paramedics and police officers had been called. No one had called her; she had simply developed a type of sixth sense over the years. She saw him there, surrounded by strangers talking, whispering. All she could think was, _that's not him. _

The terrifying thing was that she was wrong.

She threw herself on him, beating his chest with fists that shook. Tears ran down her cheeks, the effects of crying turning her face red and blotchy. She felt firm hands pull her away and fought. Her fists beat uselessly against an unyielding surface, and she glanced up, mouth opening to form some angry exclamation.

The words died in her throat. The man holding her looked so cold and unapproachable. "Claire," he said, and his voice was cold and hard. It made her shiver. "Stop."

"No," she snarled after a brief pause in which she gathered her wits about her. She pulled away, her lip curling in disgust. "You don't even care, do you? All the things he said about you, none of them are true, are they?"

With a last withering glance, she turned and left the room.

The man staggered and was steadied by one of the faceless paramedics. He looked over at the body and somehow became even more hard and cold. The police officer he spoke to later left the room utterly terrified and wouldn't speak to him again. The task of questioning the man therefore fell to Detective Gareth Jackson, who saw right through his bullshit to the grieving lover inside and so merely asked him a few questions and then let him go.

"If we have any further questions, Mr. Gray," he said as he was leaving. "We'll be sure to contact you."

When the paramedics and police officers finally left, Gabriel Gray wandered aimlessly through the house. His hands glanced over picture frames and old paperbacks, around the edge of the kitchen bench and bedroom drawers, through the shirts and trousers until he extracted one shirt in particular. He laid it on the bed where the body had been before they had taken it away to the morgue. He lay down beside it and buried his head in the soft fabric.

His breathing, at first deep and unaffected but soon shaky and uncontrolled, filled the room. Silent tears ran down his cheeks, soaking the fabric. When he glanced up, he saw that it had started raining. It bucketed down, the sound of the rain smashing against the roof drowning out any other sound. He let himself go then, opened his mouth and a sound half way between a wail and a sob issued forth.

He held the shirt close and rocked back and forth. He could still smell Peter, his scent still there on the shirt he'd worn last night. He'd been laughing and then he'd kissed him, out of the blue, just as they had done when they were both younger than they were, than he looked. And now he was gone, just like that.

In the morning he packed a bag and left the house for the second to last time. He went to Ireland and wrote in a journal, little things like what he thought about the landscape, and the people, and how much _he _would have loved it, or hated it, either way. He laughed at this behaviour; _he _would have laughed. _It's just so unlike you, _he would have said, and then have spent the rest of the day mocking him for it. There would be a fight and he would storm out. Eventually Gabriel would find him staring morosely into a glass of whiskey the bartender had fostered onto him, since he didn't usually drink. There would be more yelling, then kisses and sex, but not anymore.

He went to Paris and visited Angela. They shared a few stories, really just anecdotes, about the man they had both known. He asked about Claire, not because he cared but because she seemed to expect it. Apparently she was fine, although still angry at him.

"She'll get over it," said the frail old woman before him. Her hands shook as she handled the shot glass full of vodka before downing it.

He nodded but didn't care either way.

He went to London and took a tour around the city, staring blindly at the sights as they whizzed by. An old man asked him if he was okay and he spent the rest of the tour telling a stranger all he could never tell a friend, or Angela. The old man asked him whether he would like to join their tour.

"The guide's pretty shit," he said as he took a drag of his cigarette. "But the food's excellent."

He agreed and spent the rest of the night talking to the old man's granddaughter, a little red haired girl in a blue dress who spent most of the conversation telling him all about her kitten, Misty, and the many adventures she appeared to have. One of them involved fighting an evil rat inside Big Ben.

The old man and his granddaughter tried to fill up as much of his time as was possible. They took him to restaurants at night, the old man ignoring his attempts to pay the bill, and spent the days showing him sights they had only ever seen in brochures.

One night he read the little girl a bedtime story. She felt asleep near the end, curled up against him, and he sighed, placing the book on the bedside table. He tried to extricate himself but her fists clutched tightly in his shirt, a small frown crinkling her forehead, and he couldn't leave her. He smiled and pushed her hair back, out of her eyes.

In the morning he was gone, leaving only a short note for the old man and his granddaughter. The little girl cried but the old man merely shook his head with a small, barely audible sigh.

He went to Germany, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic. He spent only a few days in each place, moving on quickly. In this way, a year passed and he finally went back, to the house that used to be a home. No one lived there; he had the funny feeling Angela had had something to do with that. Everything was as it had been; even the shirt he'd left on the bed was still there. He pressed his nose to it, but it no longer smelt like him.

Still, he sat on the edge of the bed and clutched the shirt as though it was his only lifeline. Maybe it was. He closed his eyes and remembered all the fights, all the furniture that was broken, all the mirrors that were smashed. They'd replaced the bathroom mirror so many times he'd lost count. The bed he was sitting on was their fourth, because Peter kept setting fire to it for some reason he had never figured out. The coffee table in the living room had been broken too many times; three of the legs had had to be replaced.

He realised he was rocking back and forth, and so put an immediate stop to that behaviour. Only a few seconds later he was doing it again. His shoulders slumped, and he just let himself be.

No one understood. Oh, they grieved but they didn't really _know_. If he really let himself go – not like now, but uncontrollable, inconsolable – he knew he might not be able to pull himself back together again. He was gone. It was something he couldn't fix, neither Gabriel Gray the watchmaker nor Sylar the serial killer. It didn't feel like someone had ripped his heart out; instead it was as if his heart had stopped beating the moment Peter's had and he was just walking around without a heartbeat. Dead, but unable to admit it.

He took a deep, steadying breath and opened his eyes. It was raining, even though it had been clear blue skies and sunshine just moments before. Maybe hours had passed, or maybe just minutes. The sound worked its way into his brain and somehow told him where to go.

He spent the night in the house and left for the last time early in the morning.

Coyote Sands, once a scene of unimaginable tragedy. Its buildings had been covered numerous times with sand. He'd been there before, once upon a time. A mission of peace, Peter had called it. _Come on, _he had said. _I think you two will get along just fine._

She stood there, and the sand came up around her, buoyed by the wind. She tilted her head to the side and smiled.

"You made it rain," he said.

She didn't nod. She didn't need to; her agreement was implicit in the way the sand moved around her and between them. Some of it got in his eye and he blinked it away.

"You asked me once," she said, her voice carrying across the distance, as dreamy in quality as her smile. "A favour."

He nodded.

"Do you have it then?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bracelet. On it hung small metal replicas of a small kitten with large whiskers, a shot glass, a tiny open book, a gun, a small house and a globe. He'd had it made especially for this.

The wind snatched it from his hand and it drifted over to her. She examined it, sliding it between her fingers, her dreamy smile now a permanent fixture on her face. And then the dreaminess was gone. When she glanced over at him, her eyes were sharp, unfettered by age.

"Then," she said, "Your favour is granted."

He felt something sharp pierce the back of his skull. He smiled, his eyes fluttering shut as darkness overcame him.

She buried him under the sand, so deep no one would ever find him. She buried him next to his beloved.

"_Sometimes I believe in fate, but the chances we create always seem to ring more true. You took a chance on loving me, I took a chance on loving you" – If You Were A Sailboat, _Katie Melua

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**Well.**

**Review please. **


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